Candy is one of our favorite things about Halloween, so why not do a science experiment with it?! Prior to our experiment, we talked about the word dissolve and what it means. For our experiment, we wanted to see what kind of liquid can dissolve the sugar in our candy pumpkins the best!
We filled our 4 jars with different liquids in each. We had a jar of water, baking soda and water, vinegar, and vegetable oil. We made sure to label our jars so we knew which one was which.
After filling our jars, each kiddo put a pumpkin in a liquid of their choice. We ended up with 4 pumpkins in each. First grade students then documented their predictions on which liquid would dissolve the sugar the best. After our predictions, we made our initial observation to see if the pumpkins had changed at all. Although the changes were not much, we did see some very small differences from when we put them in. At different points throughout the day, the kids would check on the pumpkins. At the end of the day, we did our final observation and saw that vinegar dissolved the pumpkins the best, with water close behind it. The kids were also very interested in why the oil did not dissolve the pumpkins at all. We talked about how the oil did not dissolve the pumpkins, but rather preserved them!
